Davos Promenade, WEF · 2022–2025
The Filecoin Sanctuary
- Spatial
- Environmental
- Collateral
Overview
Filecoin Foundation needed a physical presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos that could hold its own on the Promenade, competing for attention alongside the world’s largest financial institutions and tech companies. Over four consecutive years (2022–2025), I led the full creative direction for the Foundation’s presence in Davos - its most high-profile annual activation.
Approach
The brief called for something premium and considered, well clear of the typical crypto booth. How the Foundation showed up was shaped in close collaboration with senior stakeholders, and I directed everything the audience touched - environmental graphics, spatial branding, print and digital collateral - with the team producing to it and production partners building on-site, so the finished build matched the intent.
Four editions, one identity
The Sanctuary was never the same size twice. Budgets, partnerships and footprints shifted every year, and the temptation each January was to redesign to fit. I did the opposite: one identity held steady while the space flexed around it - a bigger build got more surfaces, a leaner year got fewer, and the brand read identically either way. That decision is what turned four separate builds into one compounding asset. The first edition had to earn its place on a Promenade where every serious institution has a storefront; by the fourth, the Sanctuary was a fixture the Forum’s audience already knew - an open-web foundation with a permanent-feeling home among the banks. By 2024 it had become CNBC’s dedicated event space in Davos, hosting 17 filmed sessions in a single edition, with partnership packages opened to other brands.
Outcomes
Across four years the activation’s scale rose and fell, but consistency was what carried it: returning to the Promenade year after year turned a one-off booth into a recognised fixture and built a genuine relationship with a high-level audience - the policymakers, press and partners who came back. The production log for the four editions runs to 164 pieces of work, from exterior banners and wayfinding through badges, films and the venue’s digital screens. Holding one identity steady across those editions compounded Filecoin Foundation’s credibility in Davos in a way no single year could.
Brand films and explainers produced around the CNBC partnership ran as a media campaign valued at $2M: broadcast spots across Europe and Asia, plus advertorial placements on CNBC.com. That figure is the only part of the story that fits in one - and it sits downstream of everything that doesn’t: an audience that kept coming back, and a space credible enough that a global broadcaster chose to move in.